[Foundation-l] [Slashdot] Why the Photos On Wikipedia Are So Bad

[wiki-lists at phizz.demon.co.uk]

Peter Gervai wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 21:05, <wiki-lists at phizz.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> Peter Gervai wrote:
>>
>>> Usually I do not get it why people choose NC licenses all the time
>>> while there's usually a low probability to actually _lose_ money by
>>> making it public.
>>>
>> This may come as a shock to you but its not about money. When I take
>> photographs it is in my free time, and outside of the commercial system.
>>
>> If you have a personal use, want to illustrating an article or blog that
>> is not Adsense rich, have an academic use, or a small scale fundraising
>> non-profit fine take what you want. If on the other hand you are share
>> cropping with Google Ads, using the images to tart up an otherwise
>> tawdry commercial web site, are involved in online selling, are a
>> commercial advertising or publishing house, then kiss my arse.
>>
>> The NC license serves very well.
> 
> That's nonsense, to put it mildly.
> 
> What you say is basically two things:
> 
> 1) You do not release your work because you do not want other people
> to gain on them even that it does not mean any loss for you at all.
> 
> 2) You do not release your work because you want to prevent certain
> uses you do not like.
> 
> 
> As of #1, it is often called "envy". You cannot make money from them
> so nobody else should. Of course you have the right to be envious of
> others, but then editing WP must be pointless for you, since people
> may GET RICH (no, really) by your work. I can _sell_ your work for a
> million bucks on DVD. Anyone could. So, as you phrased: this may be
> come as a shock for you. This reasoning doesn't really fit to what
> we're doing here.
> 

You seem confused. It has nothing to do with making money. It is all 
about keeping them free of commercialism.



> #2 is even more logical, since by publishing anything online means
> your work could be used on porn sites, war crim sites, whatever you
> please, including ad-ridden pages. Your NC license wouldn't change a
> thing for those people who don't care about it. If you want to control
> your content WP is the NIGHTMARE for you, since anything could be used
> almost anywhere, really, legally. I can create  copy of WP with an ad
> for every even line, plus the full sideborders, and it'd be legal and
> okay.
> 

And so it would even if you didn't use a free license. Facts cannot be 
copyrighted only the specific expression can (maybe). The CC license 
that is applied to each page is useless, because the facts cannot be 
copyrighted anyone that alters, transforms, or builds upon the facts 
presented can do so anyway without any regard to the license. The 
license only applies to verbatim copying of the pages. Which, other that 
Adsense scrapping has limited commercial potential, its not as if 
someone is going to print and sell 100 bound copies of the article on NURBS.

Additionally, one should point out that as the articles are crowd 
sourced, if you didn't license the verbatim copies under a free license, 
anyone that wanted to reuse them would have to clear the rights with all 
the article editors. IOW the verbatim copies can only be reused because 
they are under a CC-BY license. The free license is actually a necessity 
of reuse not virtue.

Its only the images and other multimedia files, because they can be 
reused divorced from the articles, that have any commercial potential. 
The celebrity bio can be got almost anywhere, probably from the celebs 
own website, or ghosted autobiography. The high resolution photos on the 
other hand, can be turned into posters, used to illustrate a gossip 
page, provided as a computer wallpaper to draw fans to a website, ... 
Put simply its the images that bring in the crowds.


> 
> So I think people never releasing anything free and sticking to NC
> lincenses aren't logical, thinking people. I can accept that there are
> people who make photos for a living, and they do not want to release
> all work, full resolution due to monetary reasons. But those people
> who made 50 photos of a person and reject to release any one of them
> freely just because whatever, well, these people aren't considered
> thinking enough by my not so humble self.
> 


If I take photos of a person there will be some that are quite useless 
because their expression or posture wasn't quite right, and there will 
be a whole bunch where any one of which would suffice. Same with a 
professional photographer who isn't not going to release any of those 
extras because each one is simply an alternative for that used.


> (As a sidenote, a NC image can be used in really dirty pages if
> there's no commercial gain, like nazi propaganda pages, hate pages,
> etc. There are other long list of reasons why NC is of no use in the
> long run. Use full copyright and keep the picture rights. If you're
> lucky the images may be locked 200+ years after your hopefully late
> death.)
> 


The CC-BY license allows that too, so your point is?